Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

Debbie Swick has a way of spotting problems that most people barely notice — and then refusing to let them go.

On the Outer Banks, the Southern Shores resident is best known as the driving force behind the push to ban balloon releases, a grassroots effort that helped shift public awareness around a form of litter that can travel hundreds of miles before landing in waterways and harming wildlife.

This time, her focus is something less visible but just as persistent: discarded monofilament fishing line — the nearly invisible plastic filament that can linger in the environment for centuries, entangling and injuring marine life long after it’s been cast aside.

In partnership with the Outer Banks Anglers Club, Swick has helped launch a new monofilament recovery and recycling program — one that aims to intercept that line before it becomes a long-term hazard in the water by installing and maintaining collection vessels at sites across the Outer Banks.

“It is a strangling mechanism,” Swick said. “It becomes entangled in fish gills, sea turtles, seals, porpoise. It doesn’t break down. It will amputate and maim marine life.”

Discarded fishing gear — including monofilament line — is widely recognized by marine scientists as one of the most dangerous forms of ocean debris. Research has found that roughly 740,000 kilometers (about 460,000 miles) of fishing line enter the ocean each year — enough to circle the Earth more than 18 times.¹

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), at least 260 marine species are known to be harmed by entanglement in marine debris, including sea turtles, seabirds, and marine mammals.² Monofilament line is particularly dangerous because it is nearly invisible underwater and extremely durable, capable of persisting in the environment for hundreds of years.³

That is something David Masters Jr., vice president of the Outer Banks Anglers Club, sees regularly. “It’s usually tumbled up in seaweed or buried in the sand,” he said. “I pick it up all the time. I’ve seen birds with fishing line caught on the wings or legs and that’s very sad.”

Local conservation groups and park officials have long warned that sea turtles along the Outer Banks can become entangled in discarded fishing line, which can impair their ability to swim or feed — and in some documented cases, lead to death.⁴ Necropsies of stranded turtles in North Carolina have identified monofilament entanglement as a contributing factor, underscoring the long-term danger posed by fishing line that remains in the environment.⁵

Swick is a member of the Outer Banks Anglers Club and last year’s Member of the Year. That, combined with her reputation as an accomplished environmental advocate and volunteer — including recognition with a Governor’s Medallion Award — gave her the standing and credibility to introduce the idea of monofilament recovery to the
anglers. She brought the concept to the club’s board in January, and by February, they were building the collection vessels.

“I told the board, under no circumstances were we going to half-ass this,” she said.

This time, Swick wanted something different: accountability. Each location would be “adopted” by a member of the Outer Banks Anglers Club, responsible for monitoring, emptying, and maintaining the vessel.

“I have the list,” she said. “I know who is supposed to be picking it up, when and where.”

Recreational fishermen are often among the strongest stewards of the waters they fish — a point echoed by fisheries managers and conservation organizations who increasingly emphasize angler participation in sustainability efforts.⁶

The Outer Banks Anglers Club has its own track record, including helping spearhead the creation of artificial reef AR-165 off Oregon Inlet.

The program itself is simple by design. Collection vessels made from PVC pipe have been installed at fishing-heavy locations across the Outer Banks, including piers, marinas, and public access points. Among the initial sites are Kitty Hawk Pier, Avalon Pier, Jennette’s Pier, the Manteo waterfront, Wanchese Marina, and several others.

“We haven’t spoken to one entity that said no,” Masters said, noting support from local governments, property owners, and organizations.

Anglers deposit used monofilament line into the vessels. From there, club members assigned to each site collect the material, clean it, and bring it to monthly meetings. Swick then weighs the line and ships it to a recycling facility operated by Berkley Fishing in Iowa. There, it is processed through the company’s national recycling program, which
has collected millions of miles of monofilament since 1990 and repurposes it into products such as tackle boxes, other plastic goods, and components used in aquatic habitat structures.⁷

The program is still in its early stages, but initial results are encouraging. At one early collection site at Pirates Cove, volunteers gathered 4.5 pounds of monofilament in a single pickup. “That could have all ended up in the water,” said Swick.

As of now, about a dozen sites are in place, with a goal of reaching roughly 20 locations. Organizers are also working to expand the program through local tackle shops and a developing partnership with the North Carolina Beach Buggy Association, whose members could help collect discarded line from beach areas on Hatteras and further south.

Swick has set a clear benchmark for the program’s first year: 100 pounds of collected line. But success, she said, will be measured in other ways too. “When the community starts talking about how much less monofilament they are seeing in the water,” she said, “and when they start asking for us to put more vessels up — that’s a good sign.”

For Masters, the effort reflects something broader about the club itself. “It’s important people realize recreational fishermen really respect the natural resources we have here, because it is our love to fish here,” Masters said. “We want to keep it pristine.”

Sources

1. Global estimates on lost and discarded fishing gear and ghost gear impacts, based on peer-reviewed research (Richardson et al., 2022, Science Advances), including annual losses of fishing line and gear.
2. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — Marine Debris Program, documenting entanglement impacts affecting at least 260 marine species.
3. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — monofilament fishing line persistence estimates (up to ~600 years in marine environments), widely cited in coastal management and debris mitigation guidance.
4. Outer Banks Forever — Cape Hatteras National Seashore conservation guidance on sea turtle entanglement risks from discarded fishing line.
5. Outer Banks Voice — regional reporting on North Carolina sea turtle necropsies identifying monofilament entanglement as a contributing cause of mortality.
6. NOAA Fisheries — Recreational Fishing Policy, emphasizing “proactive stewardship” and collaboration with the angling community as essential to sustainable fisheries management.
7. Berkley Fishing — Berkley Conservation Institute, “Dedicated to the Future of Fishing,” documenting the company’s national monofilament recycling program (established 1990) and reuse into products such as tackle boxes and habitat materials.

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

This post has been updated to include neighboring counties.

New Hanover residents without residential trash and yard waste pick-up through the city of Wilmington can recycle their Christmas trees and other natural decorations at no charge starting Dec. 26.

The program that ends Jan. 31 is a joint effort of the county’s Recycling and Solid Waste Department, the City of Wilmington Sanitation Department and Home Depot stores located at 5511 Carolina Beach Road and 210 Eastwood Road.

All natural trees, wreaths and garlands with the lights, ornaments, stands and tinsel removed can be dropped of at either of the Home Depots or the New Hanover County Landfill, 5210 US Highway 421 North. Artificial trees or decorations will not be accepted.

Residents are asked to stack items intended for recycling neatly due to limited space at these drop-off sites. Those using this service will see fenced-in areas in The Home Depots parking lots, with signage directing them to drop-off points.

“Seeing homes decked out in beautiful décor is a wonderful thing during this festive time of year, but once the holiday season ends, it’s important to dispose of natural décor in a responsible and environmentally safe manner,” Recycling and Solid Waste Director Joe Suleyman said in a release. “We’re excited to continue this partnership with the City of Wilmington and our local The Home Depot stores, which allows living Christmas trees, wreaths, and garlands to be recycled and converted into mulch and compost. This material will be used in our parks, gardens and grounds, helping reduce waste and keeping our environment clean.”

In addition to trees and wreaths, residents are reminded that other holiday materials such as gift wrap, paper or cardboard boxes, holiday cards, old gadgets and electronics can be recycled at the county’s recycling processing facility, drop-off sites throughout the community or via the Mobile Hazwagon.

At this time, string lights, tinsel, foam packaging, bubble wrap, and ribbons or bows cannot be recycled and should either be reused or placed in the trash. 

Learn more at Recycling.NHCgov.com or by calling 910-798-4400, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.

Those living within the Wilmington city limits can learn more about recycling services and accepted items online.

The Brunswick County Landfill in Bolivia will accept live Christmas trees free of charge to Brunswick County property owners and residents Jan. 2-31.

Brunswick County Convenience Centers will accept live Christmas trees in January at a charge of $5 per tree.

Normal tipping fees will be applied after Jan. 31.

Residents are reminded to remove all ornaments, lights, and decorations prior to disposal. The county landfill and convenience centers accept string lights and cords year-round at no charge to Brunswick property owners and residents as part of the electronics recycling program.

Oak Island’s annual “Grinding of the Greens” program will kick off Dec. 26, when residents can drop off live, free-of-decorations Christmas trees in the Middleton Park Complex parking lot at 4610 E Dolphin Dr.

The program runs through Jan. 16.

Town officials are reminding residents and visitors that placing live Christmas trees on the beach and beach dunes, and burning Christmas trees as part of beach bonfires, is prohibited.

Pender County is not offering Christmas tree disposal at its convenience sites.

Property owners there may contact Wilmington Compost Company at 7336 N.C. 210 in Rocky Point and Hampstead Mulch and Stone at 12981 U.S. 17 in Hampstead for disposal details.

Coastal Review will not publish Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in observance of the Christmas holiday.

Plans to phase out during the next decade single-use plastic products on public lands — places like the Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras national seashores — are in the works, and while optimistic, conservation groups have their concerns.

Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced Thursday the department-wide approach to reduce plastic pollution and a “first-ever effort” for the department to factor the climate crisis into all operations. The announcement came during the White House Summit on Building Climate Resilient Communities, which was broadcast on YouTube.

“Everyone here today understands these simple truths. The climate crisis is real. It’s happening now. And it’s uprooting lives across our country,” she said during the summit. “It is abundantly clear that even as we transition our economy toward a sustainable future, adaptation and resilience must be core pillars of our collective climate response.”

Haaland signed her Secretary’s Order 3407 on World Ocean Day June 8, 2022, directing the department “to reduce the procurement, sale and distribution of single-use plastic products.”

“I issued a secretary’s order to phase out the sale of single-use plastics on interior-managed lands by 2032. Today, we are telling you how we’re going to get it done,” she said.

Each bureau has sustainable procurement plans outlining approaches and schedules to phase out single-use plastic products such as plastic bottles and bags, and to implement improvements like the installation of water bottle filling stations across interior manage lands.

Related: Interior order phases out single-use plastics on public lands

“Our department is also taking a concerted look at how we operate and make decisions about the future in the face of the climate crisis,” Haaland continued, adding that it should be part of every decision.

That look includes four new department manual policies “to strengthen and enhance mission critical decisions and activities” and also reflect the department’s “commitment to using science, indigenous knowledge and landscape-scale management as the foundation for departmental decisions,” she said.

The department has adaption and resilience projects across the country.

In northeastern North Carolina, Haaland said the department is working with partners and local officials to “advance transformational peatland restoration work. Healthy forested peatlands offer some of nature’s best carbon storage while protecting coastal communities from threats like sea level rise, flooding and wildfires, but extreme climate fueled conditions combined with increased wildfire risks threaten these essential ecosystems and the communities and wildlife that depend on them.”

To advance nature-based solutions, more than $27 million from the Inflation Reduction Act has gone to restoration efforts for the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary, which Haaland said is to fortify communities against the “mounting impacts of climate change.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners have restored 37,000 acres of peatlands already at Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, over half of the project’s goal.

Related: Refuge exudes natural diversity, wonders of pocosin lakes

“By restoring the natural hydrology and regional peat soils. The department is ensuring that communities and local habitats can enjoy the region’s countless ecological services from clean air and water and soil to storm flow resilience long into the future,” she said.

The plans Haaland announced Thursday are in support of the president’s executive order that called for federal agencies to take actions to reduce and phase out procurement of single-use plastic products to the maximum extent practicable.

Interior officials said that the plans published Thursday will be updated in 2024 to include additional details on where and how single-use plastics will be eliminated.

Since the signing of the secretary’s order last year, officials said that national, wildlife refuges and conservation lands have been installing water bottle filling stations, increasing recycling, and working with concessionaires to reduce sales of single-use plastic bottles and use of plastic utensils, bags, straws and other plastic products.

Cape Lookout National Seashore Chief of Interpretation and Education Nate Toering said Friday that the seashore is already ahead of the curve on eliminating single-use plastics in many areas throughout the park.

“We have worked closely with park partners to achieve this. For example, Eastern National, who runs our park stores, switched from issuing plastic bags with sales, and instead offers inexpensive reusable bags for purchase,” Toering explained. Adding that service providers such as Island Express Ferry Service have transitioned to selling water and other drinks in cardboard boxes and cans instead of plastic bottles.

“So, while there is always room to improve, Cape Lookout is well on its way toward achieving this goal. With over 50 miles of beaches and already tackling a never-ending marine debris problem — including lots of plastics — it’s a relief to know that we’re at least becoming less of the problem and more of the solution,” he said.

Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider told Coastal Review Friday she feels that phasing out single-use plastics is achievable, but it will take a long-term commitment and accountability from decision-makers on all sides of the political spectrum.

“Plastic waste and pollution are industry problems that have burdened consumers for generations. I am hopeful that government intervention and sustainable procurement practices set by the Department of the Interior will show progress in pollution prevention. I am hopeful that this effort will further support industries that provide alternatives to single-use plastic products,” Rider said. “With all that said, the burden remains on us consumers and constituents to hold decision-makers, now and in the future, responsible for protecting our quality of water and life from plastic pollution.”

Oceana Campaign Director Christy Leavitt said in a statement Thursday that “Today our national parks are one step closer to being plastic-free.”

The organization “applauds” Haaland’s “commitment to phase out the sale and distribution of single-use plastic products in national parks and other public lands” but, the department should “implement the plans more quickly.”

“The National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and other bureaus of the Interior Department should immediately phase out the most problematic plastics, including plastic foam food and beverage containers and plastic bags. Protecting our national parks from plastics is an important step toward a plastic pollution-free future and can’t come soon enough,” she said.

A longtime advocate for ending plastics pollution, Bonnie Montelone said she has been studying plastic pollution since 2008, “when this topic was just starting to capture the global conscience.”

She is founder and executive director of Plastic Ocean Project, a Wilmington-based organization working to end plastic pollution.

Though plastic production and use has nearly doubled from 245 metric tons to nearly 470 metric tons since then, Montelone continued. “We are at the tipping point of real change.”

Montelone added that another federal agency, the Department of the State, is taking strides to end plastic pollution, as well.

She attended the launch Sept. 20 of End Plastic Pollution International Collaboration, or EPPIC, in New York City, a new public-private partnership.

With $15 million from the Department of State, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Aspen Institute and The Ocean Foundation’s Plastic Initiative, both based in the U.S., and Searious Business in the Netherlands were able to initiate the multistakeholder effort.

“We know all too well the devastating impacts of plastic pollution on our planet. The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to finding real solutions to this global crisis at home and abroad. EPPIC will create the stage to motivate ambitious commitments and actions to combat plastic pollution,” Jose W. Fernandez, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment said in a statement.

EPPIC aims to spur global action on plastic pollution by supporting projects worldwide to make the full lifecycle of plastic more sustainable, starting with efforts to change the design and use of plastic products. The EPPIC will build on established partnerships and networks to avoid duplicating efforts, the website said.

“Recognizing the need to change the design and use of plastic products in order to make plastic’s full lifecycle more sustainable, the federal government is now supporting collaboration with governments, businesses, civil society, the philanthropic and NGO communities,” Montelone said.

Though this is encouraging, Montelone said, if consumers understood that every time we buy food or drink packaged in plastic, we are voting for more of the same.

“But more importantly, if we took a look at that plastic and said, ‘I’m going to be eating and/or drinking the chemicals from this packaging and when I’m done with it, the environment, whether in a landfill or not, is going to also consume those chemicals,’ people might reconsider,” she said.

The 2023 Environmental Stewardship Initiative Conference set for Sept. 26-27 in Raleigh will offer educational sessions on timely environmental topics, a chance to share best practices, and networking events.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Environmental Stewardship Initiative is hosting the two-day event at the North Carolina Rural Economic Center in Raleigh. The tentative agenda is on the NCDEQ website.

The Environmental Stewardship Initiative is a member-based program for businesses that want to improve sustainability and put in place pollution prevention practices that protect the environment.

Educational sessions during the conference later this month will cover LED recycling, legislative updates, DEQ PFAS strategy, goal setting, program and recycling updates, and more. The annual ESI awards are to be presented just after lunch on the final day of the conference.  

Environmental Stewardship Initiative members, business and community leaders and the public are encouraged to attend. Tickets range from $75 to $200. Register to attend online.

The initiative is a voluntary program that provides its members with networking and outreach opportunities to learn about innovative solutions and share successes as they achieve their goals. DEQ provides no-cost technical assistance to members, including strategies to reduce water and energy usage. 

WILMINGTON – It is not about turning a profit.

Showing people that food, yard and animal waste has value – that’s centric to New Hanover County’s composting program.

“It was never intended to be a revenue stream for us,” said New Hanover County Recycling and Solid Waste Director Joe Suleyman. “To keep that out of the landfill, that’s where we make our money. It’s about educating the customers. We want to make believers out of them.”

More than five years have passed since the county began operating its composting program, one built on a “kind of” shoestring budget, ingenuity and creating the just-right recipe of chemical balance, time and temperature.

Last fiscal year, the program made available to the public 273 tons of finished compost — nutrient-rich material for New Hanover County residents — for free.

Over the years, development in the county and billion-dollar damaging hurricanes have shaved off years from the landfill’s life expectancy.

When Suleyman took the helm of the county’s recycling and solid waste program in 2012, the landfill was taking in about 600 tons of waste a day.

Today, an average of about 700 trucks routinely unload about 2,000 tons of waste a day, he said.

Mixed in with the household trash, construction debris and other waste is tons and tons of discarded food.

Up to 40% of produced food goes uneaten in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. An overwhelming majority –  about 95% – of that food waste gets disposed of in landfills.

Those gut-punch statistics prompted the USDA and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in June 2013 to launch the U.S. Food Waste Challenge.

The challenge calls on operators within the food chain, from farmers and food manufacturers to grocery stores, universities and local governments, to connect with hunger relief organizations to recover food waste, or food that is edible but discarded; reduce food waste through improving storage, shopping, marketing, labeling and cooking methods; and recycle food waste to feed animals or create compost, bioenergy and natural fertilizers.

The USDA and EPA in 2015 established a national goal to reduce by 50% food loss and waste by 2030 to improve food security and conserve natural resources.

The following year, officials with the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s dining services approached the county about partnering to divert pre-consumer food waste from the university’s Wagoner Dining Hall.

The idea took flight, but not without its challenges, Suleyman said on a recent April morning while standing amidst the composting area tucked among towering green grass-covered hills created by tons upon tons of trash at the county’s landfill off U.S. 421 North in Wilmington.

The footprint for a composting operation within the landfill required something very compact.

Enter Daritech Inc., a Lynden, Washington-based company that designs and manufactures components for cattle milking and manure management.

The county purchased a BeddingMaster in-vessel manure composter, an 8-foot-diameter, 40-foot-long machine designed to recycle manure into bedding for cows. 

It took about two months of trial and error to figure out they could feed a chemistry-derived recipe of food, yard and animal waste into the machine that would turn out a product safe for people to use as compost.

The in-vessel composter and its supporting equipment were installed at New Hanover County’s landfill in November 2017 and operations began the day before Thanksgiving of that year.

As the large, green, barrel-like cylinder slowly and squeakily turned, Suleyman explained the composting process, one he said is about balancing nitrogen and carbon.

Each morning, Sarah Morton, environmental technician, uses a small Bobcat loader to feed about 10 cubic yards of the right combination of food and yard waste and discarded animal bedding into the composter.

From there, the fully automated in-vessel system handles the remainder of the work. The machine is completely insulated so the temperature inside is consistently regulated. This allows billions of good bacteria to naturally generate heat, which is needed to kill off bad bacteria like salmonella and weed seeds.

“The magic goal is 130 degrees Fahrenheit for three consecutive days,” Suleyman said.

Excess moisture collected from fresh air fans pulled into the machine drips into a bucket. Liquid in the bucket goes into the recipe to supercharge the biological activity taking place inside the machine.

“We’re doing what Mother Nature does every day, but we speed up the process,” Suleyman said.

Once the mixture is turned into usable compost it is released from the machine and pushed by the Bobcat into a curing bunker where it must stay for a month.

The finished product is a black-colored, crumbly material.

It did wonders for Debby Riescher’s flower beds.

“It made a difference to my flowers,” she said. “They’re perky and bright and they’re coming up.”

Earlier this month, Riescher was back for a second round of compost with plans to tackle her lawn.

The compost “is a game changer because my soil is sand,” the Wilmington resident said.

Riescher and Morton filled with compost upwards of 20 large, black plastic yard waste-type bags. Each bag is filled to about a third of the way to make their weight manageable for Riescher to carry. Surprisingly, the smell emitted from the area is not putrid, but rather earthy.

She doesn’t have a pickup truck so she used the bags to transport the compost from the landfill in her small KIA SUV, its rear becoming noticeably closer to the ground as more bags were tossed inside.

Riescher said she learned about the county’s composting program during a 2019 master gardener class hosted at the New Hanover County Arboretum. Suleyman was one of the speakers during the class.

“It’s free,” Riescher said. “That’s the thing. I just know I couldn’t afford to buy enough compost to spread over my lawn.”

Spring is the busy season for the composting area, where people come to get compost in everything from truck beds to storage totes to bags.

A handful of people are on a waiting list for compost, Morton said.

Initial cost of the composting operation, including construction of buildings on the site, the composter and permitting was $680,000.

The electric bill for the operation – less than $200 a month.

“It’s such a simple design,” Suleyman said.

Since the program’s inception, other entities from local restaurants, Live Oak Bank, Tidal Creek Co-op and homeowners have diverted food waste to the county’s composting operation.

Suleyman said the program has taken about 250 tons of compostable waste annually for the past five and a half years. That figure is on the conservative side, he said. 

At least 2,500 tons of compost has been generated since the program’s inception.

The county operates a HazWagon, which parks in different parts of the county each week to accept waste that can be used at the composting facility.

More information about the HazWagon, compostable materials and scheduling times to pick up compost is available at https://nhcgov.com/354/Composting.

New Hanover County residents can now recycle single-use paper products typically used in the foodservice industry and No. 5 plastic containers.

New Hanover County Recycling and Solid Waste and the Foodservice Packaging Institute, which is the trade association for foodservice packaging industry in North America, have partnered together on the effort.

Included among the materials that will be accepted for recycling now are paper-based items like to-go cups used at restaurants and coffee shops, along with cartons used to hold liquids like juice, milk or stocks and broths.

“The amount of usable space in our landfill is becoming smaller each day and we know that recycling is a way to help address this issue,” Recycling and Solid Waste Director Joe Suleyman said in a statement. “This new partnership is very exciting as it will help keep everyday containers so many of us use out of the garbage and our landfill, while also giving them a second life as a reusable product.”

No. 5 plastic containers are commonly associated with bottles used for hygiene products like shampoo, lotion and soap, as well as takeout food containers and tubs used to hold things like yogurt or sour cream. These plastics can be identified by the number 5 inside the recycling triangle logo on their surface. Spiral-wound containers, like the tubes used to hold stacked potato chips or unbaked dough, can also be recycled.

To help reduce contamination, individuals who are recycling any of the accepted materials are encouraged to make sure they are empty and lightly rinsed to remove leftover residue.

Last year, the team at New Hanover County’s Material Recovery Facility sorted and packaged more than 42,000 tons of recyclable materials that was shipped off for processing to be reused at facilities around the region.

New Hanover County has seven recycling drop-off locations that can be used by all residents. In addition, residents in the Wilmington city limits can recycle through the city’s curbside recycling program. 

Kure Beach and Carolina Beach also offer curbside recycling residents, and there are private recycling services that residents can contract with directly.

To learn more about recycling in New Hanover County, visit Recycling.NHCgov.com.

Sorting out recycling can be a tricky process.

Currently, recycling professionals say the commodity markets — where recyclables are sold — are stable, so everything that can be recycled is achieving that goal.

But on the Outer Banks, the past several years have been tumultuous for recycling.

Officials and residents in Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head and Manteo learned in early 2020 that recyclables leaving Dare County through Bay Disposal & Recycling were actually being burned at a waste-to-energy plant, Wheelabrator, in Portsmouth, Virginia. They faced a dilemma: Should they continue recycling?

Nags Head opted to switch in March 2021 to the recycling provider with which Duck had contracted since 2005, Tidewater Fibre Corp., also known as TFC Recycling.

The Nags Head Board of Commissioners when it met March 1 approved TFC’s 73-cent rate increase. Homeowners contract directly with TFC and now pay $10.33 per month.

The town pays $5 per month per household of TFC’s total $15.33 fee “to encourage recycling,” according to Nags Head Public Information Officer Roberta Thuman. The number of subscribers increased over the first year and is now steadily around 900.

Manteo, meanwhile, chose to end its townwide curbside recycling program in January 2021, according to Emmett Moore, district manager for Bay Disposal. He noted that individual residents can still contract directly with the company for recycling services, as some Kitty Hawk residents do, absent a townwide curbside recycling program.

Kill Devil Hills continues its residential recycling franchise agreement with Bay Disposal, a contract in place since 2008. Residents who opt into the program pay $13.20 per cart per month, according to Public Services Director Steve Albright. Subscribers have increased from 950 to about 1,060 over the past several years.

Southern Shores also continues to contract with Bay Disposal for curbside recycling, but residents don’t pay out of pocket for the service, instead it is included in their taxes. “This is a service that our property owners expect,” Town Manager Cliff Ogburn said in an email.

Duck has a similar program, but with TFC.

“No separate fee is collected for recycling services as it is included in property taxes,” Public Information and Events Director Kay Nickens said in an email, explaining that TFC provides each home in Duck with a recycling container.

A LOOK BACK: COVID-19 and the Waste Stream, a special reporting series

Formerly known as Outer Banks Hauling, Bay Disposal operated its own material recovery facility — sorting, baling and marketing the various recyclables it collected — until fall 2018.

Commodity markets took a dive and left the company, which was acquired by Waste Connections in early 2018 but still operates under the same name, scrambling and asking for a rate increase.

“Recycling commodity values have dropped to a point where we have been forced to close our recycling processing facility and deliver the material to a third-party vendor at a rate of $75.00 per ton (transportation and processing),” Moore wrote in his Nov. 30, 2018, letter to town officials in Kill Devil Hills.

While the vendor wasn’t named, records show that Bay Disposal was taking materials to TFC. But by early 2020, all recyclables Bay Disposal collected were going to Wheelabrator.

A Jan. 16, 2020, letter from Joshua Smaltz, then-Outer Banks site manager for Bay Disposal, advised Kill Devil Hills officials that the company had the capability to take materials to TFC instead of Wheelabrator, if the board so chose, but the cost would “nearly double.”

Bay Disposal was still taking all materials to Wheelabrator as of April 21, 2020, according to a follow-up letter from Smaltz.

In March 2022, Albright questioned where recycling was going, and a new site manager, Pamela Stine, said most of it was being recycled at RDS, a facility in Portsmouth, Virginia.

“As we continue to educate the community and our customers on proper recycling, we continue to be able to increase the amount of clean recycle we take to RDS,” Stine wrote in an email dated March 8, 2022.

Stine wrote that of the recycling collected in February 2022, 70% was “clean enough” to go to RDS, with the remaining 30% of “contaminated recycling” going to Wheelabrator.

Bay Disposal had yet another Outer Banks site manager by mid-2022, who currently holds that title.

Jeremy Savage told Coastal Review that he’d relocated to the area seven months ago.

“Ever since I’ve been down here, the market’s been good. We’ve been taking 99% of our stuff to RDS,” he said.

“If RDS closes on us for a couple days, we kind of just hold onto our recyclables (until they reopen, and then) we bring it up to them,” Savage said. The facility has a large loading area, and if it becomes full of material to the point that equipment can’t maneuver, the area must be cleared out before they accept more material, he explained.

Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk each operate a drop-off recycle center, where residents without curbside service can take and sort their own recycling. Nags Head has two unattended drop-off recycling locations. Dare County Public Works operates a recycle center in Manteo and keeps mobile bins in Wanchese, Stumpy Point, Rodanthe and Buxton, which can be used by both county residents and visitors.

Bay Disposal hauls items such as cans, plastics and paper from the Manteo facility, where all county recycling is brought.

But the county also accepts used tires, which go to a facility in Cameron to be converted into a soft surface material for playgrounds and football fields, used vehicle motor oil, which it sells to Noble Oil. It sends scrap metal and appliances like lawnmowers and refrigerators to Dare Area Recycling Technologies, or DART, in Wanchese, said David Overton, sanitation and recycle supervisor for the county.

Dare County sells its cardboard directly from that facility to a buyer in Suffolk, Virginia.

Glass from all over Dare County — 36 to 42 tons annually from restaurants, businesses, mobile bins and individuals — comes to the Manteo facility, where a glass crusher has been used for more than 25 years, according to Overton.

There are two bays below the machine for the two products the machine churns out, landscaping pebbles and sand. Both are made available free to residents, who must visit the facility to pick it up. Calling ahead to confirm availability is encouraged. Overton said people often use the glass pebbles for landscaping, for jewelry and for art.

But on March 7, all the pebbles were gone, as one Roanoke Island man was filling his truck bed with sand to use as fill on his driveway.

“If recycling doesn’t take place, at some point, we’re going to run out of places to put our trash,” Overton said. “That’s why it’s necessary to recycle. If you dig a hole and you keep putting dirt in it, after a while it’s going to fill up. It’s kind of simple.”

The recycling leaving Dare County through either Bay Disposal or TFC ultimately ends up at a facility owned by members of the same family.

Michael Benedetto owns TFC Recycling in Chesapeake, Virginia. His brother, Joe Benedetto III, owns RDS.

Joe Benedetto III’s biographical information on the RDS website says he is “a third-generation member of the recycling and solid waste industry and has worked in and around recycling facilities his entire life.”

Their family has been in the business since the 1800s, according to Kathy Russell, a community and outreach education staff member at TFC. She confirmed they are brothers.

TFC is celebrating 50 years in business and has well-established relationships with recycling markets, Russell said; while “RDS is not nearly as old.”

At TFC, everything but fibers (meaning paper) is recycled in markets in the U.S. “There are just not enough paper mills in the U.S.,” Russell said. But being close to ocean ports, TFC can easily ship its paper recycling internationally to countries including India, Indonesia and Mexico.

She encourages people to only recycle clean paper and empty bottles and cans. Recyclables are only truly recyclable if there is a market for them. In a perfect world, manufactures would only use packaging materials for which there is a market, she stated.

But as it is, people should never put items such as plastic wrap and plastic bags in recycling bins. Those can cause machines to jam. Only special programs — such as those some grocery stores operate — accept plastic bags.

For his part, the most frequent nonrecyclable items Savage regularly sees are lithium batteries and pizza boxes.

Any paper or cardboard with food residue is trash, he noted; and people should take lithium batteries directly to landfills.

“Those cause major fires for our trucks and our loads,” he explained.

To learn exactly what is recyclable, recycling professionals encourage people to contact their town, county or recycling provider.

For more information, visit www.darenc.gov/departments/public-works/recycling; https://tfcrecycling.com; https://rds-virginia.com; or www.wasteconnections.com.

Dare County resumed recycling operations Monday, which falls on America Recycles Day, after not being able to offer the service for several months because of a staffing shortage.

A program of Keep America Beautiful, America Recycles Day is a nationally recognized day on or around Nov. 15 dedicated to promoting and celebrating recycling in the United States.

The Dare County Public Works Department announced earlier this month that several of the previously halted recycling services were scheduled to resume. County officials said in a social media post that recycling operations resuming on America Recycles Day was a coincidence.

The staffing shortage was cited when the public works department in May closed the Rodanthe-Waves-Salvo Recycling Center and removed recycling trailers from recycling sites in Wanchese, Manns Harbor and Stumpy Point.

Though staffing continues to be an issue, the county reopened the Rodanthe-Waves-Salvo Recycling Center with some changes in effect in order to ensure recycling occurs at a pace staff can meet and maintain.

Only clean cardboard and co-mixed recyclable items, including glass, plastic, steel cans, paper and aluminum cans will be accepted at the Rodanthe-Waves-Salvo Recycling Center. No electronics drop-off is available, and no trash dumpsters are provided.

Officials ask that if you visit a recycling site and there is no room for your recyclables, bring them back once staff has had a chance to bring an empty trailer. Do not leave bags of recyclables on the ground at any locations.

The county asks visitors and residents to remain patient as the department reestablishes recycling in these areas and to understand that its ability to provide services may be limited at times.

The department also noted that should any reopened recycling areas become dumpsites because of noncompliance, they site could potentially be closed again indefinitely.

For more information, contact Dare County Public Works Director Shanna Fullmer at 252-475-5844 or Shanna.Fullmer@DareNC.com.

Nags Head residents can subscribe now for curbside recycling beginning May 1.

The town’s board of commissioners during its March 3 meeting approved a contract with TFC Recycling of Chesapeake, Virginia, for residential subscription-based curbside recycling at a rate of $9 a month.

“We’re excited for the curbside recycling service to start so our homeowners can once again have their recyclables actually recycled,” said Mayor Ben Cahoon in a statement. “We appreciate everyone’s patience as we moved through the process to ensure we did what we determined to be best for our town. TFC is a family-operated recycler focusing on collecting, processing, recovering, and responsibly disposing of post-industrial and post-consumer recyclables, so we are confident they are passionate about recycling and providing quality service to their customers.”

For curbside recycling service, residents need to provide contact information at nagsheadnc.gov/recycling. TFC Recycling will contact those on the list to set up an account. The town needs a minimum number of subscribers before the service will start. For more information on TFC, visit tfcrecycling.com.

Since the new subscription recycling program is voluntary, the town’s ordinance no longer requires a minimum number of recycling carts, but there is a requirement for seasonal rental units to maintain one trash cart for every two bedrooms.

In 2016, blue carts were issued to residences at no charge. The town had purchased the carts with help from the North Carolina Division of Environmental Quality’s Community Waste Reduction and Recycling Grant Program.

Nags Head staff are to begin collecting the blue recycling carts next week from each residence to eliminate confusion and reissue the carts to those households subscribing with TFC. The recycling carts may be used free of charge. Collection will begin March 15 along South Virginia Dare Trail north of Gulfstream Street in the Whalebone Junction area. Residents should place their carts by the road on the day of trash service and left there until collected. The remaining areas of Nags Head will be collected in following weeks. Additional information regarding the cart collection process will be available at nagsheadnc.gov/sanitation.

Property owners who paid a fee for additional carts after 2016 may call Nags Head’s Public Works office at 252-441-1122 to inquire about a credit or refund.

“We approved several changes to our trash collection schedule and the routes to improve our sanitation services,” said Cahoon. “Our refuse collection is challenging due to the weekly influx of new, temporary residents in our warmer months and the landfill’s limited Saturday operating hours. Staff thoroughly analyzed our collection routes and their volumes, along with many other variables, to determine the most efficient, productive, and logical method for collecting waste in Nags Head.”

To meet TFC’s curbside recycling service calendar, the town changed its collection routes and schedule effective May 1. The schedule will remain the same throughout the year. New routes and the schedule are available at nagsheadnc.gov/sanitation.

Manteo is moving from curbside residential recycling collection, a free service for residents, to a paid subscription-based service starting Feb. 5.

Residents have until Jan. 31 to call Katie Beasley at Bay Disposal at 252-491-5105 ext. 351 to participate.

Weekly roll cart recycling service with Bay Disposal will cost $11.35 per month. Bay Disposal will bill residents each quarter.

Starting Feb. 5, Bay Disposal will begin to pick up roll carts at the homes of residents who choose not to participate in the subscription service. Roll carts need to be at the curb by this date, though Bay Disposal may need to extend pick-up activities into the following week.

Temporary recycling containers are in the side parking lot at town hall now through the end of June to help during this transition. Residents can also use the Dare County Recycling Center located at 1018 Driftwood Drive. The schedule is on the county website.

Contact James Ayers at 252-473-2133 for additional information.

The measures put in place in March to curb the spread of COVID-19 have changed how North Carolinians consume and dispose of waste. This is the third installment in a series examining how advocacy organizations, local governments and state agencies are adapting to these changes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how we consume, which is being reflected in the recycling and waste industry.

The Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler in a message encourages Americans to recycle materials from their households to recycle more and recycle right by keeping gloves, masks, other personal protective equipment out of recycling bins and off the ground. 

“Businesses that normally recycle large amounts of paper and cardboard aren’t able to do that right now. Because of this, household recycling is more essential than ever. We are all staying home and getting more deliveries in cardboard boxes and generating more material than normal, much of which can be recycled,” according to the EPA. “Recycled materials are key for everything from making new products to boxes to ship products and other essential supplies for the everyday needs of hospitals, grocery stores, pharmacies and American homes. There are critical needs for all raw materials in the manufacturing supply chain, especially paper and cardboard.”

One concern the state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Environmental Assistance and Customer Service, or DEACS, has heard from local government and recycling hauler contacts is that contamination in the recycling stream has increased since March.

DEACS Recycling Business Development Specialist Sandy Skolochenko explained in a recent interview that varying factors have led to the contamination problem.

“It ties in to the use of more single-use plastic items and residents placing them in the recycling bin even though most of those items don’t belong. Other factors are more time spent at home and more material generated at the curb,” she said. “In some cases, people are simply using their recycling bin as an overflow trash container. Additionally, unfamiliar materials like gloves and masks are now commonplace in the home and I’m sure there is some ‘wishcycling’ happening with those materials.”

She explained that wishcycling, also known as aspirational recycling, “happens when you put something into the recycling bin without checking whether it’s actually recyclable.”

The division developed a social media campaign to address COVID-related residential waste to help educate the public about what can and can’t be recycled.

Skolochenko added that she’s heard anecdotally that the commercial waste stream has decreased more than 50% and on the residential side, the Solid Waste Association of America reports that volume has increased 20%.

Big picture, Skolochenko said, is that the waste and recycling stream has shifted during the pandemic from the commercial sector to the residential sector.

“Commercial facilities generate quite a bit of cardboard, so the availability of that material has decreased at a time when manufacturers really need it to make essential items like toilet paper, shipping boxes and packaging for food and medical supplies. So it’s very important that we keep our residential recycling programs intact to keep feeding recycled content into the supply chain,” she said.

Matt James is a DAECS industrial development specialist who focuses on recycling business development.

James also noted that the stream of recyclables that goes to material recovery facilities contains much more residential recyclables since the pandemic has forced more folks to stay home.

“As businesses have reduced their hours, the commercial stream of recycling has decreased. Usually, the commercial stream of recycling is higher value and less contaminated,” he said.

Residents can help reduce contaminating the recycling stream by recycling materials that are actually recyclable such as plastic bottles, tubs, jugs and jars, glass bottles, metal cans, paper and cardboard.

A recent survey from his office showed that 80% of the recycling collected in North Carolina went to a manufacturer in the southeast, about 7% of the tonnage went to states outside the southeast and 13% of North Carolina’s recyclables left the country to be recycled in another country, he said.

“The most common and troublesome contaminant in the recycling stream is still plastic bags. The plastic bags and film tangle up the recycling equipment at Material Recovery Facilities. If people want to recycle their grocery bags, they can take them back to the store, but they should not put them in their recycling cart,” he added.

As for beach towns, the trend he’s noticed is that residents demand recycling despite the struggles with the industry.

“Because coastal towns can be located further from some of the state’s material recovery facilities, towns sometimes have difficulty finding outlets for their materials. We’ve seen some coastal communities drop their recycling program only to bring it back after their residents demand that service. Our office has been working with recycling markets to find sustainable solutions for recycling on the coast,” he said.

Shanna Fullmer, public works director for Dare County, said that trash tonnage has gone up overall 7% since last summer, mostly residential trash versus commercial.

“Recycling has slowed due to departmental challenges along with the closure of private recycle company on Hatteras Island,” she said. The only beach town that unincorporated Dare County manages is Hatteras Island and the closure of private company has presented Dare County with overflow issues as well as contamination issues.

She reiterated that following instructions at recycle yards as to what materials go where is vital to keep the recycling stream uncontaminated. “Recycle only the basics — plastic, glass, cardboard, aluminum cans, steel cans, paper. Many items people want to recycle simply are not recyclable in this area due to lack of markets.”

One beach town that has figured out a way to bring recycling back to its residents is Southern Shores.

Town manager Cliff Ogburn explained that because of changes in the market, Bay Disposal, which hauls the town’s recycling, had been taking the material to an incinerator.

“We are pleased to have worked with Bay to find a way to get back to recycling,” he said in an interview in late August. The town council amended the contract with Bay Disposal Aug. 18 and will now be hauling the recycling, including glass, to Recycling & Disposal Solutions of Virginia, or RDS, in Portsmouth.

Bay Disposal notified the town in December 2019 that the company no longer had a place to deliver collected materials. Since then, Bay has been taking the town’s recycling material to a waste-to-energy facility also in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Bay Disposal cannot place any noncontaminated recycling material in a landfill. The change adds $5,701 to the original annual contract amount of $189,500. The town said it serves about 2,800 homes as part of its recycling contract, according to the town.

Across the board, Ogburn said that while he hasn’t noticed an increase in littering, there is more residential trash and recycling than in years past, “Which makes sense due to more people staying home.  It’s also reflected in that trash and recycling costs have increased due to the increased volume.”

Joe Benedetto III, president of RDS Virginia, said he’s looking forward to working with Southern Shores to find creative solutions to the challenges that recycling has, especially with the challenges that COVID-19 has brought.

He explained that RDS is a smaller processor that focuses mostly on recycling, and serves about two dozen local governments in parts of Virginia and is trying to expand to the Outer Banks. He said they take in about 50,000 tons of recycling and about 20,000 tons of trash.

Benedetto said that recycling and the recycling markets have struggled recently with China being out of the recycling market in the Unites States for the last three years — that’s what led to the closure of a lot of recycling facilities. It pushed a lot of the cost structure back toward municipalities. China no longer buying recycling materials contributed to the demise of a lot of recycling programs, especially those on the Outer Banks.

RDS Virginia has been in talks with the state to set up a small facility somewhere closer to the Outer Banks to save on some of the transportation costs, and set up a small operation to do processing.

“The challenge with the Outer Banks is the location and the fact that there really isn’t a dedicated recycling center in that area. And, and that’s partly because of location and partly because of volume,” he said.

His company, having gone through the lack of demand and market, was able “to adjust a little bit over the past few years so that’s at least one big burden that’s been off our shoulders.”

Since March, Benedetto said that because of all the shutdowns, volume on types of paper from commercial and industrial has dramatically decreased and there has been an increase in the material coming out of the households, which makes sense because people are staying at home.

The mixed materials they’re seeing come out of households changed, too. The biggest change is the additional cardboard, which he contributes to the “Amazon effect,” as well as single serve products, tin cans and aluminum cans.

Among the single-serve products he’s noticed an increase in is single-serve plastics, like water bottles, but he said he hasn’t noticed an increase in plastic cutlery.

“It just kind of reflects the shifting of people from an office building to a home,” Benedetto said, and the shift from buying at a store to ordering online and having delivery to your house.

“We have also seen a higher percentage of contamination,” Benedetto said.

He speculated that could be because there’s folks who may not have been actively recycling in the past and are not quite sure what to recycle. He said there have been some gloves and masks but “things like plastic bags and such seem to be a little more prevalent,” he said.

One way he hopes to help lessen contamination in the recycling stream is to put out printed magnets explaining what to distribute to residents. ‘Education is always, in my opinion, the thing that we need to do and continue to do to reduce contamination and improve recycling rates.”

Local and state observations are in line with a recent survey by the Environmental Research & Education Foundation and the National Waste & Recycling Association on how the industry has been affected and how it has dealt with COVID-19 challenges.

The organizations received about 400 responses, mostly from waste haulers, as well as consulting firms, municipalities, government agencies and academic institutions, all of which reported being impacted by the pandemic.

Results indicate that academic institutions were among the most impacted, with government agencies and waste haulers reporting around 90%.

“About 6 out of 10 of haulers/waste managers experienced a decrease in volumes, while nearly 3 in 10 actually managed more material and the remainder were unchanged. This reflects the decline in commercial waste from the closure of offices, retail spaces and restaurants contrasted by the increase in residential waste from being quarantined. Unfortunately, increased volumes do not necessarily translate to attendant rise in revenue as many residential contracts are fixed price,” according to the EREF.

Additionally, close to 70% respondents noted that residential waste was the largest increase, with the remaining consisting of food, yard, commercial, medical, construction and demolition and industrial waste, in that order, while 67% observed a decrease in commercial waste.

Some respondents indicated that there have been changes to recycling, with some being sent directly to the landfill or minimal sorting is taking place, some stopped manual sorting, and others allowed all recyclables to be mixed, stopping all sorting. There were a few instances where recycling was stopped completely.

Respondents observed a decrease in medical waste rather than an increase.

“Anecdotal observations via discussions with medical personnel suggest that while localized COVID-19 ‘hotspots’ could result in increased medical waste volumes, the majority of the U.S. has seen reductions in medical waste,” according to EREF. “Healthcare workers suggest this could be due to a large portion of the population working at home, which may impact the frequency of situations requiring medical care. Elective surgeries were canceled and telehealth services have increased. Many doctors and dentists closed their offices to routine care and are only now beginning to reopen. In addition, COVID-19 patients do not generate significant amounts of medical waste.”

Despite the changes in volume for the different streams, 83% indicated they’re not handling any waste differently.

The Solid Waste Association of America, or SWANA, submitted in July a written statement to the U.S. Senate Committee of Environment and Public Works about the challenges facing recycling in the United States.

The statement is in conjunction with the Committee’s oversight hearing, “Responding to the Challenges Facing Recycling in the United States,” according to SWANA.

SWANA notes in the statement the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic is having on recycling programs and facilities, similar to those being reported by other organizations. There has been a decrease in recovered material from commercial customers such as schools, offices, and stores, meanwhile residential waste and recycling volume increased nationwide in March and April, though it has declined from the peak of about 20% higher than normal, according to SWANA.

SWANA also pointed to operational changes at recycling facilities to keep workers safe, temporary suspension of some curbside collection programs, and additional personal protective equipment provided by employers in response to concerns about exposure expressed by front-line workers.

NAGS HEAD — Even with the upheaval of seemingly everything in everyday life, somehow recycling still matters in North Carolina.

Last month, the state launched the COVID-19 Recycling Relief Grant Program to help recycling businesses and local governments buy equipment and other needs for residential recycling programs impacted by the coronavirus.

Applicants can request up to $20,000 for projects that support or improve existing recycling programs, especially residential collection of traditional recycled material such as paper, plastic and glass.

But the coastal town of Nags Head had already suspended its taxpayer-supported curbside pickup in May, despite its popularity with residents and visitors.

“While the budgetary conditions associated with COVID were a consideration in the decision to suspend the Town’s recycling service,” then-town manager Cliff Ogburn said in a May 28 memo, “contractual issues, rising costs since the program began, uncertainty in the recycling market, and the lack of processing options were all factors in the decision.”

It’s a head-spinning change for Nags Head, a relatively wealthy resort community that prides itself on its clean beaches and environmental stewardship.

Residents and property management companies that provide accommodations for thousands of summer guests were shocked to learn in early May via a text message from the town that curbside recycling would cease May 18. The bright blue recycling carts, they were informed, could now be used for trash.

State officials ‘disturbed’ by action

“The Town of Nags Head did not notify us of their decision to end their recycling program,” Mike Greene, recycling business development specialist for the state Division of Environmental Assistance and Customer Service, said in June 30 email. “We found out through the media.”

After conducting a pilot program, followed by a voluntary paid curbside pickup program, the town established a year-round curbside program for commingled recyclables in February 2016.

Start-up costs for the program, which was covered by tax revenue, included $191,626 that the town paid for the recycling carts, for which the state provided a $30,000 grant. The town also purchased an additional 1,788 recycling carts to sell for $75 each. Of them, 416 remain in storage.

Greene said his department was “disturbed” not only about the thwarted intent of the state grant, but about the broader message.

“Using recycling carts for trash pickup confuses residents and makes it difficult to re-start recycling service later,” he said in the email. “It propagates the myth that all recycling goes to the landfill and jeopardizes the credibility of neighboring programs. A decision to end a public program comes with the responsibility of removing the associated infrastructure (recycling carts) from the community.”

“Using recycling carts for trash pickup confuses residents and makes it difficult to re-start recycling service later.”

Mike Greene, Division of Environmental Assistance and Customer Service

Mostly due to its lack of regional material recovery facilities, or MRFs, to process recyclables, Greene said, programs in the northeast corner of the state in general are not on par with those elsewhere in the state.

The upheaval in U.S. markets in 2018 after the Chinese stopped accepting the world’s recyclables left contractors scrambling to find places to take material. The situation was more challenging when MRFs were in short supply, such as on the Outer Banks.

With the recycling markets dried up, costs started rising everywhere. Nags Head was unhappy with paying more at a time when its recyclables were being burned rather than recycled.

“When we started this program in 2016, we weren’t paying anything for processing,” said Nags Head Deputy Town Manager Andy Garman in a recent interview. “The disposal was free.”

Garman said that costs with contractor Bay Disposal & Recycling of Powells Point increased from zero to $70 a ton.

“And for $70 they were incinerating it,” he said. That’s because Bay Disposal was hauling the material to Portsmouth, Virginia, to be incinerated for the Navy to use as fuel.

“The cost had gone up considerably, and we weren’t even recycling anymore.”

The town currently pays $77 a ton for landfill tipping fees.

Discussions were held with Bay Disposal about using another facility for recycling, but there were questions that went unanswered regarding potential extra costs if material was contaminated, although Garman said that had not been an issue before with the company.

“We didn’t have certainty,” he said about the cost.

Bay Disposal did not respond to phone and email messages seeking information.

More than 25 residents have volunteered to participate in an ad-hoc recycling committee that is planning to meet later this summer to discuss recycling options. Also, about 130 residents so far have expressed interest in having a subscription pickup service for about $25 a month.

Garman said Bay Disposal is still picking up recyclables that people bring to two collection sites in the town.

‘Breach of contract’

At a Nags Head Board of Commissioners retreat in January, former manager Ogburn, who is now the Southern Shores town manager, characterized Bay Disposal as being in “breach of the contract with the town,” for incinerating the recyclables, according to draft minutes. He asked the board whether that was agreeable and if the contract could be amended for the same cost.

At its May 6 regular board meeting, the board of commissioners noted the town’s commitment to recycling for many years, but stressed that it needed to lessen the financial burdens related to COVID-19.

After a motion from Commissioner Webb Fuller, the board voted unanimously to suspend the recycling program and revisit it at a further date.

Residents respond

“After many years of anticipation and planning, a successful implementation and significant expense, it is unfortunate to end the program abruptly based on the current (likely temporary) conditions,” resident Megan Vaughan wrote in one of the 37 emails the town subsequently received in support of recycling.

Nearly everyone who wrote asked the town to bring some version of the program back.

“We were so excited that Nags Head made curbside pickup an available service in recent years, but also that there seemed to be high levels of participation in the program town-wide, ” resident Becky Harrison said in a May 20 email.

An owner of a property management company and the chair of the town planning board, Vaughan said in later interview that the town did not give the community — including those who serve visitors — a head’s up about the change.

“Usually, you would have some time to prepare,” she said. “Nope — bam! They just pulled the plug.”

It’s not only Nags Head’s residents who want to recycle, Vaughan said. It is also a practice that visitors strongly support and expect. Many of them, she noted, come from states where recycling has been mandated for years.

“When we tell people (that recycling is suspended) they say, ‘You’re kidding! You’re throwing it away?’”

Fears of revenue losses alleviated

As it turned out, fears of massive losses in tax revenue due to the pandemic shutdown have been alleviated by record visitation that has been nonstop since June.

“The occupancy is actually really high,” Garman said.

According to Greene, the incineration at the Wheelabrator waste-to-energy facility in Portsmouth, Virginia, was a temporary solution because Bay Disposal had trouble finding a place to take all the material it had collected. But since then, a recycling facility, Recycling & Disposal Solutions, or RDS, had been located a few miles away in Portsmouth.

Greene said that is unclear why Nags Head did not have its recycling processed at RDS.

“It’s there,” he said. “It’s a matter of choice.”

RDS, which charges about $60 a ton for processing, is currently in discussions with Bay Disposal and officials in Southern Shores related to the town’s curbside pickup program, said RDS owner Joe Benedetto.

Wes Haskett, Southern Shores’ deputy town manager, said that the proposed plan under discussion would increase annual costs by about $5,700, paid for with tax proceeds, to recycle rather than incinerate its recycled material.

“We’re hopeful that we can establish true recycling in Southern Shores again,” he said.

Staff with the state recycling office, including Greene, reached out to Benedetto in late 2019 or early 2020 in an effort to find more options for northeastern North Carolina, Benedetto said, adding they “bent over backwards.” They also worked with him on trying to set up a new MRF in Elizabeth City, he said, although for several reasons that was not possible.

Benedetto has been operating in Portsmouth since 2005, he said, and his family has been in the recycling business since the 1880s.

Although prices for recycled products are at a “historic low,” he said, recycling is here to stay because it lessens the impact on natural resources and the environment.

“I don’t see it changing,” he said. “I see it as a service that people want.”

And even under the recent economic duress, Benedetto said he “worked with his municipalities, and they worked with us.”

“Most people limped along and continued to recycle,” he said.

Of the 442 communities in North Carolina with recycling programs, according to the state, only two towns, Hope Mills and Lumberton, had temporarily suspended their recycling programs due to the virus, although Hope Mills had resumed its program June 17.

Meanwhile, domestic demand for recycled products, along with related jobs, are growing.

Greene said that more sites are starting to come online in Southern states to process recycled paper and recycled plastic.

“The markets are improving slowly,” Greene said, adding, “COVID has not helped the situation.”

One exception, he said, is that the toilet paper shortage created by the pandemic has created a better market for recycled paper.

North Carolina recycled 508,350 tons of bottles, cans, cardboard and paper — 98 pounds per person — through local government programs in fiscal year 2018-19,  according to the state. As of March 2020, 1 ton of commingled recyclables was worth $42.88 and the average tipping fee at landfills was $42.60 per ton.

Diverting food waste

Recycling is not just about keeping bottles and cans out of the waste stream, there is a growing appreciation in the U.S. for the value of diverting food waste from landfills.

Nags Head officials said the town will be exploring whether it wants to create an organic waste collection or composting program.

Food scraps not only make up a large percentage of trash, they also create enormous amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that is harmful to the climate.

In North Carolina, food waste can be dropped off at collection sites in Wake, Henderson and Orange counties.

Wake County has been working with Jeffrey Brown, a Tenafly, New Jersey, business owner who sells composters called Earth Machines. Brown offers the bins to Wake County residents for half-price.

Brown said he built an online store for Wake County about five years ago, and he opens a window once a year for residents who want a home composter. Because of their size, the machines are only sold by the pallet-load, with 20 per pallet.

When Brown started his business Brand Builders 30 years ago, he was one of the few people in the country selling composters, he said. Now he said he sells them to cities and municipalities in about 15 states.

Of the total 3,500 bought so far through the Wake County store, he said, 1,660 were sold during the last window that closed at the end of May.

The animal-proof machines can process about 10 pounds a week of household waste such as produce peels and coffee grinds, but not protein like bones, fish or cheese, into rich, organic fertilizer. And that’s waste that is not landfilled.

“It’s cost-avoidance,” Brown said. “What’s more amazing, the county didn’t invest anything other than help me promote it.”

KINNAKEET — In a depressing way, Hatteras Recycle is a microcosm of the current crisis in the U.S. recycling industry, and the urgent need for people to rethink what they throw in recycling bins.

Owners Beth and Peter Eady, who bought the business in January, are already confronting steep spikes in tipping fees they’re charged, forcing them to increase fees to their customers. At the same time, the need for uncontaminated product is thwarted by some customers who take co-mingling to its careless extreme.

“We’re struggling,” Beth Eady said in a recent interview. “We’re going to have to see at the end of the year where we stand financially. If we can keep the stream clean, that’s the biggest thing.”

As a private business serving a small resort community whose population explodes in the summer, Hatteras Recycle, which services about 1,500 rental properties and 300-400 local residences on Hatteras Island, has less cushion to absorb the stress created by the collapse in the recycling markets in 2017. That’s when China cut off most imports of recyclables, blaming dirty and unusable product.

Extrapolating just from what Eady says she has seen tossed into their recycling carts, it’s easy to imagine the extent of the contamination problem. Whether it’s thrown in because of laziness or ignorance — “I think it’s a little bit of both,” she said — trash mixed in with recycling has included dirty diapers, filled dog waste bags, pee-pee pads, fishing bait, fish parts, fishing line, plastic pool toys and spoiled or leftover food. And that’s besides the slew of plastic shopping and garbage bags that also contaminate the recycling.

When previous owner Todd Phillips first started Hatteras Recycle in 2007, he was being paid $25 a ton by Bay Disposal & Recycling in Powells Point, said Peter Eady. Before Phillips sold to the couple, he was paying Bay Disposal $45 per ton to take the recyclables. Now the Eadys have been informed that the tipping fees are being raised from the current $75 a ton to $95 a ton.

“It’s just been a year like no other,” said Phillips in a recent telephone interview from his home in Massachusetts where he lives. Phillips still maintains a financial interest in the business.

Phillips said in an interview late last year that Hatteras Recycle collected 425 tons of material in the 2018 season, from Easter through Thanksgiving.

In response to Bay Disposal no longer accepting glass, Hatteras Recycle this year asked commercial restaurant customers to separate out glass bottles and residential customers to dispose of glass at collection sites in Buxton and Rodanthe. The added benefit is that removing the weight of the glass decreases the tonnage costs.

Also, Dare County has a glass crusher, and the crushed glass is offered for free to the public for uses such as landscaping material and garden mulch, arts and crafts projects and driveway material.

Meanwhile, the business has printed flyers to distribute to summer rental companies and local businesses with information about what is and is not recyclable. Eady said the couple remains hopeful that the situation will improve, both in the industry nationwide and in public awareness.

Ivey Johnson, who for 14 years has operated Dare Area Recycling Technologies, or D.A.R.T., a metal recycler in Wanchese, is also optimistic that the industry overall will bounce back.

“I see the big boys creating new markets, finding new buyers,” Johnson said. “I think we need to reposition ourselves as top dog.”

But for now, recycling in the U.S. is undergoing an industry version of a gut-twisting churn. Plastics, glass and cardboard are no longer accepted in many overseas markets, and pallets of crushed plastic and paper waste are warehoused while mad searches are conducted for a place to send it. Countries that still accept U.S. recyclables are also now demanding only clean product.

Recently, Indonesia sent back 57 shipping containers filled with recyclables contaminated by garbage and incompatible or unacceptable material, the Associated Press reported July 9. The majority of the containers were returned to Australia, the U.S., France, Germany and Hong Kong because their contents violated Indonesian laws that forbid importing toxic waste, the AP reported. More shipments of recyclables from wealthy nations have been going to Southeast Asian nations since China banned plastic waste imports two years ago.

An article detailing the impact of the Chinese plastics ban in the June 2018 journal Science Advances said that more than half of recycled plastics had been exported to hundreds of countries, with China taking about 45 percent of cumulative plastic waste since 1992.  Between 1950 and 2017, a cumulative total of 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic has been produced. With the ban, an estimated 111 million metric tons of plastic waste will be displaced by 2030.

“Only 9 percent of plastic waste has been recycled globally, with an overwhelming majority of global plastic waste being landfilled or ending up contaminating the environment (80 percent),” according to the article, “resulting in an estimated 4 million to 12 million metric tons of waste plastic entering the oceans annually.”

Things got even worse for U.S. recycling markets in 2018, when China instituted its National Sword program that banned imports of a total of 24 types of recyclables, including mixed paper and eventually all plastics because of widespread contamination.

Recycling programs across the U.S were put on notice while the industry scrambled to find new markets. But there have been no easy answers. According to a June 21 article in The Guardian, the equivalent of 19,000 shipping containers of plastic recycling per month that used to be exported is now stranded in the U.S.  Much of it will end up in landfills.

North Carolina and South Carolina are in a better position than most states because they have a strong plastics recycling industry in place, said Micki Bozeman, Brunswick County Solid Waste and Recycling coordinator.

The county has also been protected somewhat from market shocks by contracting out most of its recycling programs, she said, and by going out to bid every three years. For instance, the county has just issued a request for proposals for its electronics recycling program. It also seeks grant funds to offset higher costs of recycling old TVs and other outmoded, heavy electronics.

“We found keeping the contracts in place really help, especially if the markets go south,” Bozeman said.

For the time being, Bozeman said that Brunswick will continue its comingled recycling program, which ranked 12^th in the state in 2018 for tonnage per capita, but it is stepping up educational efforts for the public with brochures and programming.

It’s a new world, and people need to know they can’t just throw everything together and ship it off. Now it is essential for recycled products to be clean and to be disposed of where they belong, she said. But different items can be recycled in different communities and states, and often consumers are confused.

For instance, she explained, most people don’t realize that glass windows and wine glasses are not recyclable glass and that they contaminate glass bottle recyclables.

Being more responsible for what goes in the recycling bin is an adjustment for the consumer and the businesses, Bozeman said. But with more sorting and materials recovery facilities, and more educational resources for municipal and county operations, she also sees it as an opening for new domestic businesses.

“I think it’s going to take everybody’s effort,” she said.  “I think it’s an opportunity to build the recycling industry. The whole idea is to produce recyclable material that can be recycled to a new material.”

North Carolina currently does not allow plastic bottles, aluminum cans, pallets, electronics or oyster shells to be disposed of in landfills. But recycling is not mandated in the state.

“Most of it is not a malicious act. It’s what we call ‘wish recycling,’ such as tossing in clothing and garden hoses.”

Mike Greene, recycling business development specialist, Division of Environmental Assistance and Customer Service

In an educational campaign targeting the counties, the state is set to launch an initiative called RecycleRightNC in the fall, said Mike Greene, recycling business development specialist for the state Division of Environmental Assistance and Customer Service. The state already has printable educational brochures and posters available online to help the public understand what and how to recycle. The point is to make people aware in order to bring down the level of contamination, in turn helping to restore profitability for recycling, Greene said.

“Most of it is not a malicious act,” he said. “It’s what we call ‘wish recycling,’ such as tossing in clothing and garden hoses.”

In the earlier days of recycling, Greene said, everyone got used to separating certain disposables in different containers. When recycling switched to single-stream disposal it increased recycling overall, but it changed people’s good habits.

“What we’ve done is we’ve gotten away from education,” he said. “Where with co-mingling everybody thought they throw out everything that’s not disgusting.”

Greene said that the state is working to help counties individualize information for what is acceptable for each recycling company, while also standardizing recycling imagery and language across the state.

Along with education, he said the state is also promoting an enforcement aspect that involves a warning tag and ‘three-strikes’ approach. There are also state grants available to encourage building of processing facilities and recycling businesses in counties.

Greene said the industry in North Carolina is adjusting, and the demand for recycled products is starting to come back.

“It will recover in time,” he said. “It’s a temporary crisis and I think we’re re-building it the right way.”

NEW HANOVER COUNTY – One North Carolina county is offering residents a place to drop off their broken and burned-out holiday lights.

New Hanover County’s Public Library and Environmental Management Department are partnering with Keep New Hanover Beautiful for a second year to recycle holiday lights.

Residents can bring unusable lights to locations around the county to be recycled, with proceeds benefiting Keep New Hanover Beautiful, from Wednesday to Jan. 4, 2019. Lights can be recycled at all four New Hanover County Public Library locations, the county’s mobile HazWagon and Household Hazardous Waste Facility, and the Wrightsville Beach Recycling Center. Each location will have a large blue recycling cart designated for lights.

“We collected more than 1,860 pounds of holiday lights in our first year, and I call that a success,” said Environmental Management Director Joe Suleyman in a statement. “We hope even more residents take advantage of this program in our second year, so we can keep even more holiday lights out of the landfill.”

Learn more

• Holiday Lights Recycling Program